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Dawkins: liar?

I like Richard Dawkins. He’s a prolific atheist, and I’m a theist, but desipte this fundamental difference I like his rational approach and commitment to good science and entertaining polemics. On my fondness for Dawkins, fellow blogger Stephen Graham and I disagree. But today I saw a piece in the Guardian by Andrew Brown which made me sit up in surprise:

“I still think The Selfish Gene is a wonderful piece of pop science. Not everybody does. The philosopher Mary Midgley gave it a scathing review in Philosophy and when I told Dawkins at the beginning of our interview that I had just come from reading the piece, he said, straight into my tape recorder, that Midgley had confessed to Ullica Segerstråle, a distinguished sociologist of science, that she had not in fact read the book before reviewing it.”

I had heard this before, perhaps from Dawkins himself. But the article goes on:

“[For a number of reasons] this could not possibly be true. None the less he said it with such conviction that I took the trouble to track down Dr Segerstråle and – after she had failed to respond to emails – to ring her up in Illinois. She said that of course it was nonsense.”

Dawkins later apologised for getting this rather pertinent fact wrong:

“I had an unexpected email from Dawkins himself, in Chicago, where he had just had supper with Ullica Segerstråle. They had discussed the matter and come to the happy conclusion that it was all a misunderstanding. He also, I believe, wrote to Mary Midgley apologising for telling me this rather unpleasant lie about her.”

But -and this is the incredible thing- when Brown met Dawkins at a function some time later:

“I introduced myself, and clearly this stirred a memory, because before we even sat down he said to me: ‘Do you know? Mary Midgley confessed that she had never even read The Selfish Gene before reviewing it.’ I didn’t know what to say.”

And that isn’t the end of it. Three weeks ago on Dawkins writes on his own website:

“Mrs Midgley confessed to Ullica that she had not in fact read The Selfish Gene when she wrote that article. She has since backtracked from that confession, and I was inclined to believe her.”

What is going on here? As Brown comments at the end of his piece:

“Richard Dawkins has made his name arguing against superstition and wishful thinking; he is a man who demands good evidence for every factual claim about the world – and yet he is also, apparently, a man unable to rid himself of this impossible belief about Dr Midgley; it must be very comforting to him.”

Dawkins regularly responds to stuff written about him, particularly in the national press, so we’ll await his response with bated breath. The Dawkinsistas are already at it on the Guardian comments section: they’re a loyal flock, and you’ve got to love that.

Comments (12)

There is a lot to admire about Dawkins. I remember him being questioned by William Crawley for BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence programme and William asked him something like: “Calling religious believers deluded – that’s a bit offensive isn’t it?” Dawkins reply was classic: “I don’t care how offensive it is because it’s true.” I love that. Speaking what one thinks to be the truth and to hell with anyone who moans about being offended. Fantastic.

What I dislike about Dawkins is that a lot of what he says about religion isn’t rational as John thinks. In fact sometimes he seems to barely understand the object of his criticism. His work on the argument from design is very good, largely because he’s on home territory but almost everything else I have read of his on theology or philosophy has been little better than a GCSE R.E. student could muster.

I remember having a lengthy debate on the book “The God Delusion” with Brian McClinton of the Ulster Humanists on the BBC blogsite “Will and Testament” and I was incredibly disappointed that a prominent atheist in Northern Ireland was less than competent in defending Dawkins and of giving me one good argument from Dawkin’s book that should convince a theist that his belief in God is wrong. Dawkins wasn’t interested in trying to persuade religious believers, and I have yet to meet anyone but atheists who find his book a compelling case against theism. There are far more competent and intelligent atheist writers out there, and I think atheism is in trouble if it elects Dawkins as it’s main spokesperson.

I think dawkins and new atheism in general has been a positive phnomenen. There may be better introductions to Atheism than the god delusion, but it has introduced a lot of people to thinking critically about religion.
I’d rate him slightly higher than a GCSE RE student, and i’ve yet to hear one good argument from a theist to convince me that a belief in god is right.

Shawn Mehlenbacher

Kingrupertpupkin

Don’t know what to make of this yet (Dawkins will likely respond). Until he does I will simply mention that Mary Midgley’s review of the Selfish Gene was very poor. Indeed it was so poor that one could be forgiven for thinking that she had not in fact read the book.

Hmmm…

Going from things I’ve been reading lately, Dawkins seems to make a habit of saying he was misquoted, misunderstood, tricked by journalists (look at the business about fairy stories and whether they teach children to think unscientifically). Seems to me that he’s not quite the super-rational, cool-headed sort of creature he thinks we should all be, getting caught up in his own rhetoric. That, or maybe he’s just a publicity hound after all … He inspires in me something like contempt for atheism (of his variety) and I never felt that before. No, I’m not Christian or any other religion, but I am ex-agnostic-verging-on-atheist. All Dawkins’s rants about delusion and so on, all his sneers at anyone who’s not one of his “brights” just leave me thinking, “You haven’t experienced it mate, and you really don’t know what you’re talking about!” Is that rational or scientific? No, but then intuition and feeling aren’t.

Harish

Theists have one weapon that atheists will never able to run away from. This is the nemesis called brain.
Anything we see or experience in this world is because of our brain. Our experience will alter if there is change in nerve connections inside the brain. All human beings have similar types of nerve connections and hence their experience is apparently similar. where their experience is dissimilar it is because of the difference in wiring. every equipment or material produced in this world is built to suit this specific set of wirings in our brain.brain neither experiences matter directly nor does it experience matter the way it is. For example a set of light might be reflected from a surface. but this light is never beheld by the brain directly. what happens is that the neurons corresponding to vision get active due to a simulation from the sensory nerves. In this context the brain the vat problem is very real. The brain does not know whether it is in the vat or the skull. But there is an extension to this, the brain does not know really know anything apart from sensory impulses that can cause neuron activation. In such a situation it would be purely blind belief to state that the brain is so perfectly wired that it can capture the correct state of the world. further more it is equally blind belief to state that it has the capacity to capture all the possible information that is in this world. the bat experiences world differently from us. But relatively speaking its experiences are no less valid than us. any science experiment , any scientific process conducted on matter is known and verified only because of a specific set of nerve connections in the brain. there is no way the scientist sees the world apart from using this unreliable brain.the entire structure of scientific world is built on the foundation of the suppositions we have made about the world. even if we assume that such a brain does capture information about the world correctly, there is no basis to assume that it captures all the information in this world.claiming so would be pure blind belief.but this the blind belief which is resorted to. when somebody denies the presence of god or any other entity not directly seen by us, this is exactly what is resorted to. The scientists jump up and down that these individuals are perpetuationg superstition, when the very basis of the scientist views is fragile

dt

You could have a God, by defining the word as “something unknown,” but you can never have a Bible God that makes any sense, except for “brain-in-a-vat” scenario, which, if true, woohoo, we’re all God’s little puppets. This would be cool if the Gods really were rock-n-roll machines, instead of flesh-eating monsters.